Broadband over TV spectrum would dramatically alter Internet access

This is the biggest broadband development of the year so far: the potential of using frequencies in the television broadcast spectrum to carry broadband two years from now.

As Eric Bangeman of Ars Technica writes, should tests of the technology being pursued by Microsoft, Intel, Dell and Google succeed, the broadband landscape would be dramatically altered when it comes on the market in early 2009.

"Wireless networks using the spectrum should be relatively easy to deploy, and would provide residents of rural areas easy access to broadband while giving everyone else a third alternative to DSL and cable," Bangeman writes.

AT&T chief's words at odds with company's pathetic broadband deployment efforts

In a recent meeting with AT&T employees in Atlanta, AT&T Chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. admonished them to go the extra mile to serve customers.

“I’m asking you, I’m pleading, don’t let them go until they’re happy,” The New York Times quoted Whitacre as telling AT&T employees. “You just can’t let them go. Hang on till it’s done.”

But rather than hanging in with customers, AT&T has hung out large numbers of them to dry, letting them go years without broadband services and without any meaningful hope of getting broadband anytime soon.

They may be only a mile from existing broadband infrastructure, but Ma Bell won't go the extra mile to provide service as Whitacre as exhorts his workers. Instead, customers are told the system cannot provide broadband because they're too far from a central office, their loop's too long, there's no neighborhood DSL gateway and any number of "no can do" excuses.

While Whitacre may insist AT&T can't "just can’t let them go," that's exactly what it's doing with a sizable segment of its residential customer base.

Analysts question AT&T broadband strategy

Analysts aren't the only ones questioning Ma Bell's broadband strategy, one that can't deliver any broadband services at all let alone IPTV to large portions of her service area.

But there is potential downside for AT&T too, analysts said, particularly when it comes to its closely linked broadband and television strategies. Some analysts assert that AT&T has set itself up poorly to compete in those areas, which are considered essential to the telecommunications product bundle.

In the case of TV, the strategy is called Uverse, and it entails delivering programming over the Internet, called IPTV. But the service has been plagued by delays and glitches and, even now, takes on average more than six hours to install in a home.

"If it cannot be called a complete failure, it's at least struggling," said Phillip Swan, president of TVPredictions.com, a Web site that tracks the television technology industry. He said that if things did not pick up soon, AT&T might have to get back into the acquisition game to buy a TV distributor, like a satellite or cable company.

Newspaper stories suggest AT&T contributions to Schwarzenegger committees linked to AB 2987

The Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee published stories this week suggesting that Ma Bell lavished love on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the tune of $540,000 for the governor's approval last fall of AB 2987, the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act.

The Times reported AT&T gave a cool half million dollars to Schwarzenegger's After-School All-Stars, a tax-exempt group founded by Schwarzenegger in the early 1990s to provide tutoring, recreation and other programs to poor children.

The Bee reported today in a page one story that eight high level AT&T executives gave $5,000 each to Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign committee in recent weeks.

Both stories contained strenuous denials from the governor's office and AT&T that the cash contributions had anything to do with Schwarzenegger's signature on AB 2987 last October.

The stories put the donations in the context of AB 2987's allowing AT&T to provide television programming and bypassing local governments by putting the California Public Utilities Commission in charge of issuing video franchises. It should be noted however that the cable TV industry also supported AB 2987.

The real issue isn't AT&T's ability to sell television programming since its aged copper cable-based infrastructure cannot reliably transmit Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service to the vast majority of California households and won't be able to anytime soon. Rather, it's AB 2987's limited build out requirements that allow the telco/cable duopoly to leave vast areas of the state -- ironically many of them inland counties inhabited by Schwarzenegger's fellow Republicans -- without any broadband services whatsoever.

State franchise laws codify the digital divide, consumer advocate argues

A push by the telco/cable duopoly to enact state laws putting states in charge of granting broadband video franchises rather than expanding broadband availability as backers claim will have the opposite effect, a consumer advocate argues.

Ben Scott, policy director of the advocacy group Free Press, told the National Journal's Technology Daily that by allowing telcos and cable companies to pick and choose areas where broadband will be offered, state franchising laws "unfortunately, are going to write the digital divide into law."

Qwest follows dubious AT&T strategy of video over copper via DSL

Western telco Qwest is considering offering IPTV services, the Rocky Mountain News reports. Analysts are skeptical since Qwest faces some of the same challenges as AT&T, which is opting for a similar strategy: Delivering video over a copper-based DSL that can't deliver broadband whatsoever to about a fifth of their multi-state service areas and at sub-video speeds in large segments where service is available.

Fiber may be the future, but copper is now for cable rustlers

Fiber may be the future for telecommunications but for meth-addicted thieves, copper is now:

Verizon spokesman Jon Davies said the company had lost $297,795 in copper since 2006 in California alone, not including money spent on work to replace the wire or loss of service to customers.

"This is a national problem," he said. "We try to keep our cables high on the poles to make it harder to get, but the people who do this are highly motivated, and they have the equipment to get at it."

BPL technical standards announced

For many rural residents, the acronym for Broadband over Power Lines, BPL, might as well stand for Broadband over Propane Lines. Neither is delivering broadband as an alternative to wire line broadband offered (or frequently not) by cable companies and telcos.

Illustrating the still nascent state of BPL is a news release issued today by the IEEE Standards Association that establishes technical standards for BPL.